Our thanks to Phil for his hard-work behind the scenes and to Ryan and boatman Jack for a most enjoyable day’s fishing. David T was top rod with Richard E in second place.

Kindest regards,

David

Supanova - Thursday 20th April

This was my first trip out with the Club in 2017 and only the second trip that had not been called off for one reason or another. We all anticipated getting amongst the pollack with perhaps an outside chance of an early season cod, but Phil phoned us all to say that we would be drifting with mackerel for ling.

I had been out with Lyle on a pollack trip on the previous Thursday & although the fishing had been tough, we all caught some good pollack, but apparently that had changed dramatically from Good Friday onwards. On one of these trips Lyle had motored nearly 150 miles for just 18 fish! However, he had found the ling on Wednesday and anticipated that we would have a good day’s sport.

ling but one lucky angler had caught a 12lb turbot.

We all blanked on that drift, but as “Fish-on” sped away Ryan set us up for a different angled drift. Almost immediately, David Wall (our new member) who had been struggling catching fish on lures showed us how to catch ling on bait with the best ling of the day, a fish of about 12lb.

Ken quickly followed on this drift with a nice young ling and then David T pulled one out of the back of the wreck. David W and Ralph caught another ling apiece, whilst Richard C caught a beautiful Channel whiting. As the bites eased, we headed north towards Weymouth to try our last wreck of the day, Again David W, David T and Ken hooked and landed a ling apiece, whilst Richard E hooked a bonus dogfish!

Despite the forecast of strengthening winds in the afternoon, the wind eased and we had beautiful early summer weather for our cruise back to Portland. It was encouraging to see so many sea birds diving for live bait rather than scavenging – particularly flights of gannets that were enjoying the early return of the mackerel shoals – hopefully plenty of predatory fish will be close behind! In the meantime, in the lee of the “Bill” we caught plenty of mackerel, with Ken catching a bonus small